Quotes of the Week: 'I Don't Even Eat Rice'
The quotes that made headlines this past week.
April 27, 2013— -- intro: From the Elvis impersonator who was accused of a poisonous plot against the president to resilient spirit in Boston to tragedy at a garment factory in Bangladesh, click through to see the moments that made news this week.
quicklist: 1title: 'I Don't Even Eat Rice.'text: An Elvis impersonator who was accused of a poisonous plot against the president was released from jail this week.
Charges were dropped against Paul Kevin Curtis after the musician spent nearly a week behind bars, accused of sending ricin-laced letters to Capitol Hill.
"I thought they said rice, so I said, 'I don't even eat rice,'" Curtis said after he was released from jail.
Federal agents searched the home of James Everett Dutschke, 41, of Tupelo, Miss., on Tuesday.
Curtis said that Dutschke has had a long-running conflict with him.
On Saturday, Dutschke was arrested at his home in connection to the poisonous letters, according to an FBI spokesperson.
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quicklist: 2title: 'This Past Week, Our State Triumphed Over Terror and Showed the World the Meaning of 'Boston Strong.''text: Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced that the One Fund Boston has raised $20 million in its first week since the marathon bombing on April 15.
Menino said more than 50,000 people had donated to the fund. Of those gifts, nearly $5 million were online donations from around the world.
"This past week, our state triumphed over terror and showed the world the meaning of 'Boston Strong,'" Menino said.
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quicklist: 3title: 'In Witness Whereof, Hear My Voice, Alexander Graham Bell.'text: Not many years ago, scientists developed breakthrough methods to uncover sound from some 100-plus-year-old recordings, giving us the chance to hear audible snippets from as early as 1860.
Through this technology now comes perhaps the most intriguing sample yet: an actual recording of the voice of the man credited with inventing the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell.
"This record has been made by Alexander Graham Bell in the presence of Dr. Chichester A. Bell on the 15th of April, 1885, at the Volta Laboratory, 1221 Connecticut Avenue, Washington D.C.," the inventor declared."In witness whereof, hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell."
The recording, a wax-and-cardboard disc, contains the voice of Bell counting aloud, rattling off different percentages and dollar figures, and stating his name, date and address.
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quicklist: 4title: 'I Definitely Had Flashbacks to Virginia Tech.'text: Kelly Willard was thrilled when she finished the Boston Marathon. Her cell phone was dead, but she was excitedly waiting to reunite with her husband and kids in the family meeting area two blocks from the finish line.
Then two bombs went off, Willard didn't know where her family was and began to have flashbacks to another terrifying event she and her husband had experienced -- the Virginia Tech catastrophe in 2007.
"There's very few times that you have terror set in, but in my life I remember feeling a certain way during the massacre -- just sheer terror -- and feeling that way at Boston, not knowing what was happening," Willard told ABCNews.com. "I definitely had flashbacks to Virginia Tech."
Willard, 32, and her husband Ryan Willard, 34, live in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, with their two young daughters but have found themselves in the middle of national tragedies not once but twice in their lives.
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quicklist: 5title: 'We Truly Believe He Has Been Set up and That There is Not Enough Evidence to Incriminate Him.'text: Boston has rallied around its police and victims of the Marathon bombing, but there are thousands of people who are rallying around Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused carrying out the atrocity.
"We truly believe he has been set up and that there is not enough evidence to incriminate him," said the Facebook group "Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Is Innocent," which has more than 12,000 members.
On Twitter, the hashtag #FreeJahar, the nickname Tsarnaev goes by, has gained traction. A Change.org petition addressed to President Obama has garnered more than 6,000 signatures, saying Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gun battle with police, are "wrongfully accused of something they did not do."
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quicklist: 6title: 'It Tells Us That Despite All the Promises and Pledges From the Retailers, That Nothing Has Changed.'text: The reported death toll from a Bangladesh building collapse climbed to nearly 350, with scores of garment workers believed to be missing as rescue crews pulled more bodies from the rubble.
There were reports that rescuers have pulled 40 people out alive from the rubble of the eight-story structure, which had been home to four garment factories.
The deadly collapse is the latest in a string of devastating incidents at garment factories in Bangladesh, including a fire last year that killed 112 workers. Bangladesh is the second-largest exporter of clothing to the United States behind China, and U.S. retailers continued to be drawn to the country for manufacturing because the production costs are so low, experts said.
Advocates for the workers have led an increasingly vocal campaign in Bangladesh demanding safer working conditions, and have been pushing major American retailers including Wal-Mart and Gap to do more to insure that factory owners are not cutting corners to reduce costs.
"It tells us that despite all the promises and pledges from the retailers, that nothing has changed," said Scott Nova, of the Worker Rights Consortium, a group that has been lobbying U.S. retailers to do more on safety in Bangladesh.
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quicklist: 7title: 'We Just Thought He Was Like All Kids.'text: Most parents believe their child is the smartest kid in the class, but when Robert Dorman says this, he's likely right.
His son, 5-year-old Gus Dorman, with an IQ of 147, became one of the youngest members admitted to Mensa, the exclusive high IQ society.
Now in kindergarten, Gus is already reading such books as "Charlotte's Web," while his classmates work on mastering the ABCs.
Dorman first noticed Gus' advanced intelligence when he started to potty train his son at 18-months. Gus started to bring a newspaper to read on the toilet, and was also reading his father's copies of "Wired" magazine.
Since Gus was their first child, Dorman and his wife, Kotomi, simply thought this was how all children acted."We didn't realize he was gifted," said Dorman. "We just thought he was like all kids."
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